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Poor man's VPN (pay for only what you need)

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Re: Poor man's VPN (pay for only what you need)

#11

Post by syshum »

azalemeth wrote: post #2

> Motivation: Lately due to GDPR many websites are blocking access in the EU. For me, I cannot order medicines back home via netmeds.com Blaming GDPR for this is a bit like blaming a lead mine for getting shot. Yes, it's involved but it's not the reason. It only seems to be certain large US websites that carte-blanch refuse to serve EU visitors over GDPR, mostly those with large, tendril-filled advertising networks t…

Business and people will take the path of least resistance.

If only a small part of my traffic / business comes from the EU yet I am going to incur huge costs, and have to fundamentally change the way my business runs to comply with GDPR guess what, the EU is getting blocked, as make not sense to do it.

My current company does not really collect user info, does no business at all in the EU or is even consumer facing in the US but looking at our internal processes it would be almost impossible to comply with GDPR with out changing MASSIVE amounts of internal processes and procedures.

Re: Poor man's VPN (pay for only what you need)

#12

Post by mindslight »

mosseater wrote: post #5
azalemeth wrote: post #2

> Motivation: Lately due to GDPR many websites are blocking access in the EU. For me, I cannot order medicines back home via netmeds.com Blaming GDPR for this is a bit like blaming a lead mine for getting shot. Yes, it's involved but it's not the reason. It only seems to be certain large US websites that carte-blanch refuse to serve EU visitors over GDPR, mostly those with large, tendril-filled advertising networks t…

On the other side of this, depending on the breadth of your data, it can be non trivial to run pipelines to redact someones information. It takes man hours to verify, and processing time ($$). Plus, what if they don't have that process in place? They will need to do it manually, and take up more time from someone. Plus you need to communicate with the requestee and verify their identity as well as give them updates w…

There are two easy answers for this:

1. Don't create surveillance files on people in the first place. It's not like the lack of privacy legislation means there are legitimate reasons to be performing surveillance. It's just that the illegitimate ones have not yet been made illegal.

2. US states should start adopting the GDPR verbatim (with no corpocratic handouts), so there is only one law to follow.

Re: Poor man's VPN (pay for only what you need)

#13

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

0xCMP wrote: post #6
jmercouris wrote: post #3

Or you could just use sshuttle with far less steps: https://github.com/sshuttle/sshuttle

Agreed. You're already setting up SSH and deleting it soon so why bother setting up the IPs, adding your public key, getting the server's public key, configuring iptables, and configuring wireguard locally when you could just SSH? Only benefit I'd see is wireguard would be easier to use on a mobile device, but the setup requires the ability to run ansible and do ssh already so... that's not really practical.

> why bother

Last I checked, wireguard had much better performance than sshuttle. May or may not matter for your use case, but it's a reason.

Re: Poor man's VPN (pay for only what you need)

#14

Post by stavros »

jmercouris wrote: post #3

Or you could just use sshuttle with far less steps: https://github.com/sshuttle/sshuttle

sshutle's page is terrible at explaining what it does. It mentions a common problem ("I have that, yes please!") and then just says "get sshuttle" and ends there.

Re: Poor man's VPN (pay for only what you need)

#15

Post by mindslight »

dinvlad wrote: post #10
azalemeth wrote: post #2

> Motivation: Lately due to GDPR many websites are blocking access in the EU. For me, I cannot order medicines back home via netmeds.com Blaming GDPR for this is a bit like blaming a lead mine for getting shot. Yes, it's involved but it's not the reason. It only seems to be certain large US websites that carte-blanch refuse to serve EU visitors over GDPR, mostly those with large, tendril-filled advertising networks t…

Well, this reminded me of the situation right here in the US. The other day I couldn't place an online order at CVS because it was repeatedly "having technical difficulties". Turns out I had to unblock half a dozen (!) advertising domains in my Pihole (incl. the ones I've never heard of) to finally place an order. I don't know how to treat it as "I have a choice whether to do business with them" ;-) I guess the only…

I handle this pragmatically by using different VMs with assorted browsers, browser configs, and exit addresses. For the context of buying from CVS (realworld nym, heavy surveillance), I'm running NoScript and slowly enable domains until the site works. Doing this for some sites actually speeds them up considerably (eg Home Depot).

Re: Poor man's VPN (pay for only what you need)

#16

Post by _jal »

dinvlad wrote: post #10
azalemeth wrote: post #2

> Motivation: Lately due to GDPR many websites are blocking access in the EU. For me, I cannot order medicines back home via netmeds.com Blaming GDPR for this is a bit like blaming a lead mine for getting shot. Yes, it's involved but it's not the reason. It only seems to be certain large US websites that carte-blanch refuse to serve EU visitors over GDPR, mostly those with large, tendril-filled advertising networks t…

Well, this reminded me of the situation right here in the US. The other day I couldn't place an online order at CVS because it was repeatedly "having technical difficulties". Turns out I had to unblock half a dozen (!) advertising domains in my Pihole (incl. the ones I've never heard of) to finally place an order. I don't know how to treat it as "I have a choice whether to do business with them" ;-) I guess the only…

> I guess the only way to protect my privacy in this case is to risk going to the physical store

Never give them your phone number. They suckered me, and it took multiple calls to a very slow call center to get the text messages to stop. And I couldn't get them to just delete it - it had to be done as a number change. So my number is now 415.555.1212.

Re: Poor man's VPN (pay for only what you need)

#17

Post by dinvlad »

mosseater wrote: post #5
azalemeth wrote: post #2

> Motivation: Lately due to GDPR many websites are blocking access in the EU. For me, I cannot order medicines back home via netmeds.com Blaming GDPR for this is a bit like blaming a lead mine for getting shot. Yes, it's involved but it's not the reason. It only seems to be certain large US websites that carte-blanch refuse to serve EU visitors over GDPR, mostly those with large, tendril-filled advertising networks t…

On the other side of this, depending on the breadth of your data, it can be non trivial to run pipelines to redact someones information. It takes man hours to verify, and processing time ($$). Plus, what if they don't have that process in place? They will need to do it manually, and take up more time from someone. Plus you need to communicate with the requestee and verify their identity as well as give them updates w…

I think in CVS's case likely yes, they probably hired underpaid folks to implement their site, and now those folks are probably long gone so no one would even know how to remove all those advertising domains without which the site doesn't work.

Re: Poor man's VPN (pay for only what you need)

#18

Post by j1elo »

Since basically always, I'm still using PiVPN https://www.pivpn.io/

Is that out of favor nowadays, given new technologies like Wireguard have become mainstream? Would I be better off using this, or the Algo scripts that another commenter mentioned? (https://github.com/trailofbits/algo)

Re: Poor man's VPN (pay for only what you need)

#19

Post by dinvlad »

_jal wrote: post #16
dinvlad wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, this reminded me of the situation right here in the US. The other day I couldn't place an online order at CVS because it was repeatedly "having technical difficulties". Turns out I had to unblock half a dozen (!) advertising domains in my Pihole (incl. the ones I've never heard of) to finally place an order. I don't know how to treat it as "I have a choice whether to do business with them" ;-) I guess the only…

> I guess the only way to protect my privacy in this case is to risk going to the physical store Never give them your phone number. They suckered me, and it took multiple calls to a very slow call center to get the text messages to stop. And I couldn't get them to just delete it - it had to be done as a number change. So my number is now 415.555.1212.

Oh don't get me started on that! I already gave, and regretted it ever since. There's no way to stop those messages now.

I even called them and they stopped for a while, and are now back in full force, right after my recent order.

Incidentally, I've even discovered what seems to be one of (probably many) security issues on it (one where you could see other person's order details without authentication, in this case for myself), but I'm not gonna report it because they likely don't even have a bounty program and it was likely a "feature" implemented intentionally.

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